Land Rover looking at eye control to streamline dashboard

Land Rover is looking at a number of ways to let you interact with your car, senior researchers for the company have told Pocket-lint.

In a candid chat at the Discovery Vision Concept launch in the UK, Dai Jones, Jaguar Land Rover's senior research manager across both groups explained that the day of the button focused dashboard was over.

"We already have voice, but we are already looking at gesture, eye, and face tracking options."

Jones believes that the car of the future will be able to track who you are and automatically adjust your seating position, seat temperature, radio station on the stereo and more by looking at your face.

While some cars already detect and set certain settings based on your key fob, Land Rover is experimenting with facial recognition and eye tracking similar to that used by Samsung in the Galaxy S4.

"Eye tracking rally gets interesting just think of the possibilities," explains Jones detailing that they've been testing different control mechanisms in the lab including a car completely kitted out with Microsoft Kinect sensors.

"Eye gesture would allow you to look at parts of the car to turn on relevant displays like heating elements or navigation."

Land Rover says that it already has working prototypes of gesture control in its Land Rover Discovery Vision Concept car allowing you to open or shut the door, turn indicators on or close the sunroof all with a swipe of the hand through the air and that Jones personally as a gesture controlled sunroof although he is not yet sold on the idea.

"Personally I am not sold on gesture yet, but eye tracking is a lot more appealing," Jones says before warning that "With gesture if you don't have a specific gesture it doesn't work. Nobody wants to see the window going up and down when the Queen is waving."